I, Sebastian, stood there on the warm street outside the Gotham Police Department.
The scent of blood hung around me, not merely from the slaughter before my eyes, but from the power surging through my body, from the gift of that crimson pit, and from the bloodline and throat of the eighth Brother Blood-my father-which I had severed with my own hands.
Zandia's cold, year-round mist clung to my memories. That curse was like an ancient, vicious song, murmured down through generations in every Brother Blood's family. I had seen it bare its fangs. On a night blurred yet searing in my memory, my mother, her face bloodless with terror, had dragged me away from that land steeped in faith and madness, away from my father.
We hid in the cracks of the world, scraping by, believing we could escape fate's noose. But he never let us go. To free himself from his destiny, he sent an emissary.
I happened to be out that day. When I returned, all I found was congealed dark red and my mother's eyes, which could never close again. There would never be fear in them again, only endless emptiness.
Like a dried-up well, they swallowed all my weakness and hesitation.
In that moment, I knew I was done running.
Every step on the road back to Zandia trod upon the corpses of the past. In the church hall, countless eyes, fanatical or numb, watched the ritual ground at its center.
He stood there, my father, with no familial affection in his eyes, only the wariness of prey and a murkiness born of a curse that had weighed upon eight generations. Only blades could speak between us.
Metal clashed, its shrieks tearing through the oppressive air. He was seasoned and cunning, his strength formidable. Every